Over the years, there has been considerable hype about
Islam and science in our academic and public circles; and several books, journal
and newspaper articles have been in the limelight. Fortunately, there is
consensus on three facts. First, Muslims enjoyed a remarkable ascendancy in
science for about five centuries, an ascendancy that was unrivalled by any
contemporary civilization. Second, science has now dwindled to frighteningly low
standards in the Muslim world and there is a critical need to rescue the Muslim
culture from complete intellectual atrophy. Third, there exists the
appreciation, at least in the Islamic intelligentsia, that science and Islam are
compatible, but over and above these fundamental agreements, there is
considerable dispute.

The Beaten Track

According to most traditional accounts of the
historiography of science, Muslim scientists transcended in all major fields of
scientific inquiry but their role remained, at best, one of an intelligent
postman. They took the classic Greek sources and engaged in a massive
translation and commentary enterprise, mostly under the patronage of the Abbasid
Caliph Māmūn Ibn Hārūn al-Rashīd in his Bayt al-Hikmah (House of Wisdom) around
830 C.E. After this translation movement, the end product was bequeathed to the
West at the time of the so-called first Renaissance, around the 12th century.
Science in the Islamic world then became irrelevant.

There are, however, serious problems with this approach.
First, this assumes that Muslims by themselves were incapable of originating any
new scientific ideas. The first Muslims were the desert-dwelling Arabs,
incapable of any scientific mode of thinking.

The second misgiving is the supposition that the Muslim
scientific consciousness somehow woke up from the dark languishing slumber in
the early Abbasid period (750-900 C.E.), all by itself, but there was nothing
inherent in the Islamic belief system or in the uniquely Muslim culture that
could instigate this reawakening. The impetus was all foreign. In his recent
book1,
George Saliba presents ample historical evidence indicating that the unique
administrative and political requirements of the growing Islamic empire provided
thrust to the development of the exact sciences. One major impetus also came
from the juridical requirements of the Islamic fiqh. For example, the
complicated inheritance laws of Islam gave birth to the discipline of algebra;
advanced computations of the obligatory taxes, the zakāh and the jizyah resulted
in the maturing of the numerical and fractional sciences; and the requirements
for prayer direction and timings laid the foundations for theoretical and
observational astronomy, an endeavour that radically changed the theoretical
models proposed by Ptolemy and eventually, paved the way for Copernicus’s
revolutionary works. One could note that this model of religion enriching
science works not only in the Islamic, but also in contexts of other religions.
Of note, are the Babylonians who in needing to predict the appearance of
different celestial phenomena as omens, started developing mathematical
astronomy around 2000 B.C. and devised accurate tables around 500 B.C.

The Spectre of Ghazālī

The third most objectionable premise of the classical
narrative is that the Muslim ascendancy in science was the exception, rather
than the rule. The scientists were outcasts living at the fringes of a society
that was under the grip of the clergy who shunned and resisted scientific
thought, openly derided human reason, logic, deductive proof systems and
philosophy, and were against all forms of art and music and the subtler
delicacies of free inquiry. This line of thought has now become a fashionable
premise in circles who squarely blame the Islamic orthodoxy for the major cause
behind the current state of intellectual and scientific atrophy in the Muslim
world.

A central figure in all of these debates is the theologian
and philosopher, Imām Abū Hāmid al-Ghazālī (1058-1111). His over-arching stature
in the Islamic religious tradition aside, he is also considered to be one bitter
enemy of the sciences. Several notable writers would have us believe that
Ghazālī strangulated human reason and made it slavishly subservient to revealed
knowledge. Furthermore, we are still reeling from the devastating blow inflicted
by Ghazālī on human reason!

Not surprisingly, these acquisitions gain more credence
when they come from the world’s leading scientists. For example, the Nobel
Laureate and physicist, Steven Weinberg published his review2
on Richard Dawkin’s book where he comfortably pronounced: “Alas, Islam turned
against science in the twelfth century. The most influential figure was the
philosopher Ghazālī, who argued in The Incoherence of the Philosophers against
the very idea of laws of nature, on the ground that any such laws would put
God’s hands in chains. According to Ghazālī, a cotton piece placed in a flame
does not darken and smoulder because of the heat, but because God wants it to
darken and smoulder. After Ghazālī, there was no more science worth mentioning
in Islamic countries [emphasis added].”

Another well respected and widely read figure in the
subcontinent is the physicist, University Professor and social activist, Pervez
Hoodbhoy, who very strongly claims “The most articulate and effective opponent
of physical causality was Ghazālī. According to Ghazālī, it is futile to believe
that the world runs according to physics laws [emphasis added].
3

Recently, Jamīl Ragep presented a detailed overview4
of the illustrious tradition in the sciences that flourished well nigh after
Ghazālī, discrediting claims that this great theologian of Islam stultified the
progress of rational thought. In the present article, I would highlight excerpts
from of Ghazālī’s own writings. While researching on this subject, I have come
to realize that far from strangulating the spirit of free, scientific inquiry,
this great theologian, in fact, promoted the scientific tradition.

As a major public theologian, arguably the most influential
of all Muslim theologians, Ghazālī performed the task of placing Greek and
Islamic thought in what he perceived to be their proper contexts. For example,
in numerous places sprinkled throughout his numerous texts, he makes it very
clear that his task is not to question the established truths in the natural
order. Disputing these facts of nature, far from being a disservice to the
scientific method, will be a disservice to religion itself. An instructive
example is provided in the second introduction to his monumental Tahāfat al-Falāsifah
(Incoherence of the Philosophers), where Ghazālī discusses the solar and lunar
eclipses. After stating the “scientific” facts that the solar eclipse results
from the moon intervening the sun and the earth and the lunar eclipse from the
earth coming in between the sun and the moon, he writes:

Whosoever thinks that to engage in a disputation for
refuting such a theory is a religious duty harms religion and weakens it. For
these matters rest on demonstrations, geometrical and arithmetical, that leave
no room for doubt. 5

Ghazālī on Mathematics

Let’s now see what Ghazālī’s position is on the subjects of
mathematics and arithmetic. Hoodbhoy believes that Ghazālī condemns mathematics,
rejecting the notion that anything good can be contained in it.

However, if one just reads through the texts one realizes
that according to Ghazālī these are “exact” sciences with no connection with
metaphysical or religious principles. Therefore, using mathematics to prove
religious beliefs is, at best, absurd. These sciences are based on demonstrative
proofs and their implications cannot be denied or affirmed in any religious
connotation. In his autobiography, the Deliverance from Error, Ghazālī writes:

A grievous crime indeed against religion has been
committed by the man who imagines that Islam is defended by the denial of the
mathematical sciences, seeing that there is nothing in revealed truth opposed to
these sciences by way of either negation or affirmation, and nothing in these
sciences opposed to the truth of religion.
6

Furthermore, Ghazālī claims that metaphysics and religion
are not in need of mathematics, just as poetry is not in need of mathematics, or
philology or grammar can be mastered by anyone who is totally ignorant of the
mathematical sciences.

Ghazālī warns his readers that every discipline of study
has its experts, an expert in mathematics may not be an expert in grammar and an
expert in geometry may fail miserably when it comes to matters of religion. In
short, Ghazālī’s truck is not with mathematics, but with philosophers who could
potentially lead people astray in matters of pure religion. Ghazālī makes this
very clear in the introduction to the Tahāfat al-Falāsifa: he is not
contradicting philosophers on points of semantics and definitions, nor does he
disagree with them on issues that have no religious significance (such as
eclipses). His major disagreements pertain to questions with three fundamental
theological implications: (a) has the universe existed forever? (b) does God
know all particulars? and (c) is bodily resurrection possible? It is in this
topic and its likes, not any other, that one must show the falsity of their
doctrine.7

Science as a Community Obligation

On the other hand, Ghazālī considers mathematics and
arithmetic to belong to the category of the praiseworthy (mamdūh) sciences. In
his book Revival of the Religious Sciences he writes:

Sciences whose knowledge is deemed fard kifāyah comprise
[all] sciences which are indispensable for the welfare of this world such as:
medicine which is necessary for the life of the body, arithmetic for daily
transactions and the divisions of legacies and inheritances, as well as others.
These are the sciences which, because of their absence, the community would be
reduced to narrow straits. 8

The science of mathematics is a community obligation (a
fard kifāyah) and furthermore, delving even deeper into the mysteries of
mathematics and medicine has also been regarded meritorious. Ghazālī even
laments that Muslims prefer a study of Islamic law over medicine and it becomes
hard to find Muslim physicians, yet jurisprudents abound and often indulge in
disputation, rancour, useless hair splitting and vehement diatribes, adding to
confusion and strife. For example, an individual deciding to take up study of
fiqh when there is a population in dire need of health care is someone “who
neglects to give his attention to the calamity which has befallen a group of
thirsty Muslims [and] is like the person who devotes his time to debate while
several fard kifāyah duties remain neglected in town.”9

The Worldly and the other-Worldly

A major problem of Ghazālī’s times was that all forms of
knowledge had acquired religious significance and so, points of intellectual
dispute would often slip into bitter religious disagreements, leading to
excommunication and heresy. Ghazālī addressed this situation by carefully
proposing a classification scheme of all common forms of knowledge, placing
Islamic jurisprudence, one major source of contention, at the level of “worldly
disciplines”, not too superior to mathematics and medicine and regarding it as a
collective duty of the community rather than an individual obligation. Such a
ranking was in opposition to the generally held opinion of the Islamic
scholarship, and was considered a sacrilege towards the religious merits of fiqh,
but Ghazālī stuck to his position.

The Rationalist Mu‘tazilites and Irrationalist Ash‘arites

Ghazālī was a strong supporter of the Ash‘arites, one of
the schools of thought upholding the necessity of divine intervention in the
physical course of events and opposed to the Mu‘tazilites over important
metaphysical and theosophical questions. In present-day literature, the
Ash‘arites are generally presented as dogmatists, an orthodoxy engaged in blind
imitation of the “tradition”, with no latitude for rational thought necessary
for science. On the other hand, the Mu‘tazilites are the rationalists, the
upholders of Greek logic, abstract thought and hence the true heirs and
practitioners of the scientific method.

However, one must remember that the rationalists did depend
on tradition and likewise the tradionalists did depend on rationality. The
distinction between these two groups is one of degree, rather than one of form.
The rationalists believed in tradition, in the divine origins of the Qur’ān, in
the need to interpret the Qur’ān, and their aim was not different from the
conservatives: to affirm the transcendence and unity of God. As a result,
Sherman Jackson in his introduction to Ghazālī’s text The Decisive Criterion of
Distinction Between Unbelief and Masked Infidelity writes:

Meanwhile, rationalist writings reflect a clear and
sustained recognition of the authority of the Aristotelian-Neoplatonic
tradition, including the propriety of following it by way of taqlīd.
Traditionalists, on the other hand, use reason – even aspects of Aristotelian
reason – but they do not recognize the tradition of Aristotelian reason as an
ultimate authority. 10

Furthermore, one must also remember that the one and only
period of Mu‘tazilite’s political ascendancy was during the Emperor Māmūn al-Rashīd’s
and Mu‘tasim’s reigns, extending from 813 to 842. This state-sponsored cultural
prominence of Mu‘tazilism was short lived. How could it then explain the golden
age of Muslim science that extends well beyond half a millennium?

As far as I see it, the real distinction between the two
Mut‘tazilite and the Ash‘arite approaches is actually based on the Hellenophilic
glorification of Aristotelian reasoning – a hellenophilia that is all the more
evident in several modern accounts of the history of science. A critique of the
Greek body of knowledge becomes a defining signature of irrationality,
contributing to the demise of science in the Muslim lands, enshrouded in the
coffins sewn by the religious orthodoxy, the last nail in the coffin driven by
the Ash‘arites and the funeral pyre finally set on fire by Hujjah al-Islām
Ghazālī.11

David Pingree in unequivocal language writes about this
attitude:

Hellenophiles, it might be observed, are overwhelmingly
Westerners, displaying the cultural myopia common in all cultures of the world
but, as well, the arrogance that characterized the medieval Christian’s
recognition of his own infallibility and that has now been inherited by our
modern priests of science.

Finally, I come to the point of what Ragep calls “political
spin” or “preconceived views” – an ideological framework that suits our
conceptions of Islam. The compatibility of scientific work-habits and the
rigorous demands of religious practice seems to be an alarming idea for many
natural scientists. These days, a belief in or mentioning of “God” is likely to
arouse surprise and ridicule in academic circles. Dawkins, Weinberg, Shermer and
their followers are highly uncomfortable with a deity who interferes in our
lives, a belief they would consider to be toxic to the promotion of science. For
example, even though Hoodbhoy gives considerable concessions to his readers in
his book, first published in 1991 by passing the verdict: “Scientists are free
to be as religious as they please, but science recognizes no law outside it
own”, yet in his latest article in the distinguished periodical Physics Today,
he preaches:

The faithful must participate in five daily
congregational prayers, endure a month of fasting that taxes the body, recite
daily from the Qur’ān, and more. Although such duties orient believers admirably
towards success in the life hereafter, they make worldly success less likely. A
more balanced approach will be needed. 12

It will be useful for many working Muslim scientists to
discover what a “more balanced approach” means with regards to the five daily
congregational prayers and the month of Ramadan! But remember that this sermon
is also a strict piece of advice to all practising Christians, Buddhists, Hindus
and Jews who desire worldly success in their scientific careers.

________________________1.
George Saliba, Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance,
Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007. Also see: Khwarizmi Science Society. Re-writing
the History of Science in the Islamic Civilization.
http://www.khwarzimic.org/islam/report_saliba.htm.